Opinion of Frontier Airlines?
 

We're booking a flight for my sister with them for Christmas.

Positives:
1. Friendly staff
2. televisions for each seat ($5 is reasonable)
3. free drinks
4. assigned seats

Negatives:
1. Frequent Flier program is lame



Quick story: About a year ago, girfriend and I got to the airport late (as our ticketed flight was actually departing) and Frontier could have left us screwed, instead Frontier put us on the next flight without a bit of attitude or mention of fees. Made me likely to choose them again if visiting Denver.^

Please follow the discussion in our Frontier Airlines forum. Ocn Vw 1K, Moderator, TravelBuzz.

On time performance is excellent. FA's are OK and price is near or less than WN. Elite program is not good for available seats but Summitt allows for no charge bags and free driinks.

I hope they make it but don't want them to do the ala carte deal pricing deal.

+1

F9 award seats just don't exist since the bankruptcy.

Negatives:

2. Depending on the specifics perhaps, poor connections if DEN isn't where you're either starting or ending the journey.

I was looking at Frontier for LAX-MCO, and it takes it an awful long time to get me there compared to several other airlines. (Specifically, it couldn't get me there early enough for me to drive to my relatives' Space Coast home while they were still up. Which meant I would have to add a hotel stay to every Frontier trip to there, negating any money savings, plus wasting me tons of time.)

I looked at some other non-DEN destinations from LAX and got similar results. But since I'm only staring my journey's from SoCal, I don't know if LAX is the exception or the rule on this.

(Southwest doesn't have this problem because it can cannot you through dozens of cities. To me, based in LAX, Frontier having to connect me through DEN and absolutely nowhere else is a big downside. Nothing that I have against DEN, it's just that if they can't have enough frequency to DEN and no frequency to anywhere else that makes up for it, that's why they can't connect me nearly as well as Southwest can to most destinations they share.)

Anyone know what percentage of Frontier's traffic is nonstop (and therefore either to or from DEN)?

I like them. FA's friendly, planes are clean and the on time record is pretty good. Also I do like their airbus planes and having TV (you will need to pay though except if you have status) is pretty nice.
As a non status flyer a lot of the front seats are blocked until checkin. Do online check in a couple hours before the flight and try to change your seats because better ones might have opened up.

I fly about 100,000 miles per year and I choose Frontier whenever I can. I have never had a flight cancelled by them and they have one of the best on-time records in the airline business. The planes are new, clean, and flight crews are generally pleasant. Buy on board snacks are considerably better and healthier (fresher) than the average airline onboard snacks. They had the lowest passenger complaint ratio last month, so most people are satisfied, it seems.

I think August is the most recent month for which information is available from the Department of Transportation...

http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov/repor...200810ATCR.pdf

AUGUST
CONSUMER COMPLAINTS: RANKINGS/U.S. AIRLINES * (complaints per 100,000 passengers)
1 SOUTHWEST AIRLINES 0.22
2 ALASKA AIRLINES 0.31
3 EXPRESSJET AIRLINES 0.41
4 SKYWEST AIRLINES 0.42
5 PINNACLE AIRLINES 0.57
6 NORTHWEST AIRLINES 0.73
7 FRONTIER AIRLINES 0.79
8 MESA AIRLINES 0.92
9 CONTINENTAL AIRLINES 1.09
10 AMERICAN AIRLINES 1.22
11 ATLANTIC SOUTHEAST AIRLINES 1.23
12 AMERICAN EAGLE AIRLINES 1.30
13 AIRTRAN AIRWAYS 1.37
14 DELTA AIR LINES 1.79
15 HAWAIIAN AIRLINES 1.79
16 UNITED AIRLINES 1.84
17 COMAIR 2.07
18 JETBLUE AIRWAYS 2.19
19 US AIRWAYS 2.45